Oil palm in Nigeria
West Africa used to be
the centre of the palm oil industry. The export of palm kernels began in 1832
and by 1911 “British” West Africa alone exported 157,000 tonnes of which about
75 percent came from Nigeria. In the 1870s, British administrators took the plant
to Malaysia and in 1934 that country surpassed Nigeria as the largest exporter
of the product. Led by Nigeria and Zaire, Africa continued to lead the world in
production and export of palm oil throughout the first half of the 20th
century. By 1966, however, Malaysia and Indonesia had surpassed Africa’s total
palm oil production.
In Nigeria, oil palm is
indigenous to the coastal plain, having migrated inland as a staple crop. For
millions of Nigerians, oil palm cultivation is part of the way of life –indeed
it is part of their culture. However, during the past decades the country has
become a net importer of palm oil. While in the early 1960s, Nigeria’s palm oil
production accounted for 43% of the world production, nowadays it only accounts
for 7% of total global output.
In Nigeria 80% of
production comes from dispersed smallholders who harvest semi-wild plants and
use manual processing techniques. Several million smallholders are spread over
an estimated area ranging from 1.65 million hectares to 2.4 million
hectares and to a maximum of 3 million hectares.
As documented in the case of Akwa Ibom State, women play an
important role in the production, storage and commercialization of red palm oil
(see details in annex below).
Regarding plantations,
estimates range from 169,000 hectares (72,000 ha of estate plantations and
97,000 ha of smallholder plantations) to 360,000 hectares of plantations.
Many of those plantations
are the result of past attempts of the Nigerian government to implement
large-scale plantations, most of which resulted in complete failures. Such were
the cases of the 1960′s Cross River State project and of the European
Union-funded “Oil palm belt rural development programme” in the 1990′s. This
project included the plantation of 6,750 hectares of oil palm within an area
thought to be one of the largest remnants of tropical rainforest in Nigeria and
it was implemented by a company called Risonpalm Ltd., partly owned by the
government. In spite of local opposition, the project moved forward and EU
funding was only discontinued in 1995, seven years after its approval. The
plantation was abandoned in 1999 and reactivated in 2003. In 2010, the
local governor announced his intention to privatize it, stating that “We will
not put money into Risonpalm again” and that “We will only bring people who
will put in their money and manage Risonpalm very well.”
The World Bank played an
important role in the promotion of the oil palm business in Nigeria. According
to a recent World Bank document, Nigeria has been “the second largest recipient
of World Bank palm oil sector projects, with six projects over the 1975 to 2009
period. One project is still under implementation. Results achieved included
the plantation of 42,658 ha of oil palm, as well as road improvement and
increased milling capacity.
Government management of
its plantation estates proved to be disastrous. As the governor of Rivers State
recently said “Government has put so much money in Risonpalm and so many people
became rich out of Risonpalm by stealing the money. Now we will not put money
again so that people won’t steal our money anymore.”
As a result, many oil
palm producers eventually inherited abandoned government plantations which were
sub-divided and leased to private producers. Some individual owners formed
limited liability companies. These have younger plants/fields some of which are
yet to fruit, while most of the oil palm plantations are over 30 years.
The Federal Government
appears to be now willing to revitalise oil palm production. In April 2010, the
government launched –together with the UN’s Industrial Development Organization
(UNIDO) and the government of Cameroon- a Common Fund for Commodities “in order
to improve the income generating potential of oil palm in West and Central
Africa.” The initiative was developed by UNIDO and funding is shared between
Nigeria, Cameroon, UNIDO and the private sector.
In line with the above,
officials of Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) have recently
said that “promotion of private sector participation in oil palm plantation
holds the ace in effective revival of the produce business in the country.”
Director of NIFOR, Dr Dere Okiy has stated that “the land tenure system in the
country” is a “limiting factor against private mass production of palm oil by
individuals” and “called on local and state governments to provide land areas
to oil palm farmers to encourage mass production of palm oil.”
The increasing imports of
palm oil -widely used by the Nigerian people as edible oil- may help to explain
the recent government’s interest in palm oil production. Such may be the case
with Presco, a subsidiary of Belgian company Siat S.A. that has oil palm
plantations in two concessions in Edo State (the Obaretin Estate with 7,000
hectares and the Ologbo Estate with 6,000 hectares), and one in Delta State
(the Cowan Estate, with 3,000 hectares). The company processes the oil palm
fruit into different products within the country.
However, the current worldwide push for the use of palm oil as
the basis for the production of biodiesel probably provides a better
explanation.
Italian company Fri-El
Green Power is a good example of the above. The company first started
investigating the potential for palm oil production in Nigeria during 2005 and
in 2007 the first privatisation agreement for the government-owned Abia Palm
oil palm plantation –in southern Nigeria- was signed. In July 2008, Fri-El Abia
Palm Ltd. was officially opened by the Abia State governor during a ceremony in
Ohambele. Shortly after this, work on the rehabilitation of the plantation
started. At the same time the old oil mill in Mbwasi was repaired and brought
into production.
The Italian company plans
to eventually use the palm oil processed in Nigeria to fuel liquid biomass
power plants in Europe. Fri El Green Power has an 80% stake in the project
while the Abia State Government has 20% with an obligation to transfer 10% to
the local community. The company got a concession of 11,292 hectares, including
the former Abia Palm plantation, and a right to extend the concession up to
100,000 ha.
In spite of Nigeria’s
massive electricity shortage, Fri-El Green Power does not plan to supply
electricity locally. According to the company’s president Thomas Gostner. “We
plan to invest in the palm oil plantation, the processing of the fruit and
convert it into electricity in Europe.” In the best of cases, “each oil mill
can additionally produce some electricity for local needs using waste product.”
Everything seems to point
at the possible expansion of oil palm plantations in Nigeria -revitalizing old
ones and establishing new ones- both aimed at the national and international
market. Local communities should be aware that local and state governments may
in the future – as NIFOR demands- “provide land areas to oil palm farmers to
encourage mass production of palm oil.”
Annex 1: Oil Women of
Akwa Ibom State
The red palm oil is a common ingredient in the cooking of almost
every type of dish prepared in Nigeria. Akwa Ibom state, a coastal state in
south eastern Nigeria is one of the areas where oil is produced in large
quantities, mainly by women.
The processing of the fruits into vegetable oil is most commonly
carried out by women. It begins with harvesting the ripe fruits which grows in
clusters weighing between 20-30 Kilos. The women work communally in groups of 2
or 3. 10-20 bunches of ripe fruit from the palm tree are cut and gathered. The
harvested fruits are then cut into smaller clusters and sprinkled with water,
and then, covered with thick jute bags or banana leaves to aid fermentation and
make it easy for the seeds to be picked easily from its spiky stalks.
Two or three days after, the seeds are picked, washed and packed
in to iron drums and boiled. This process is tedious. Fire kindled from
gathered fire-wood is usually prepared a night before and at intervals,
rekindled to keep the fire cooking constantly hot. As early as 4 or 5 a.m. the
boiled seeds whose fleshy pericarp has become soft and tender are scooped with
a small basket or sieve bowl into an earth dug-out mortar, which has been
fitted with a metal drum. The boiled seeds are then pounded with a wooden
pestle to separate the fleshy pericarp from its hard kernel seeds.
The next stage involves scooping this mixture onto a flat trough
or onto the ground which had been covered with banana leaves. The kernel seeds
are then separated from the fibrous mash. This is then scooped into a
cylindrical hollow press. The wrench is then turned slowly and gradually, as
this is being done, the extracted oil from the holes in the press is guided
through a duct at the bottom of the press into a large bowl, trough or
container. This process is carried out several times until oil is drained from
the marshy mixture.
The next stage is carefully draining the oil into containers; in
doing so, the women are careful not to allow dirt, fiber or other foreign
matter into the oil. The finished product if in large quantity may be further
stored in larger metal drums awaiting buyers who come to buy them off these
women and transported to other towns. If the oil is not so large in quantity
they are then taken to the local market for sale; either way, the Akwa Ibom
woman earns her money. Though the process is tedious, the oil is top quality if
processed by an experienced producer.
Excerpted from “Oil Women of Akwa Ibom State” by Patrick B.
Akpan
Annex 2: “Foot pressing” of palm fruit into palm oil
A BBC slideshow describes
with pictures the processing of the palm oil
The process is described as follows:
“Once the kernels have been picked and brought home, women take
over the palm oil production. They pour the hot kernels into a hollowed out
log, placed in a shady spot. A woman steps into the trough and walks up and
down its length. As they add more water, the husk begins to fall away from the
nut, releasing the fatty yellow juice. As the woman treads up and down, the
mixture makes a sucking, burping sound. It clings to her feet, clogging her
toes and spreading a vivid yellow stain up her ankles.
There are two places in the state that have machines to do this,
but people have stopped taking their crop to them as police demand bribes from
people moving goods, wiping out their profits.
This harvest from a handful of trees has taken 48 hours to
process. “This amount of kernels will get us one full jerry can of oil, that’s
about 20 litres,” says one woman. They will be able to sell that for 3,000
naira ($20; £14). In the wet season they can make more oil, but the price goes
down.
Traders come and buy the seeds for further processing. The seeds
are roasted and then broken open. The translucent white inside the nut can be
eaten and is itself rich in oil. This oil is extracted by a more complicated
process and turned into a kind of tonic oil, which people rub on their
children’s bodies. They say the oil prevents colds and flu.
Source: “In pictures: Nigerian palm oil”, by Andrew
Walker
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